Picture of Sustainable South Bronx FabLab Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of being among an energetic group of educators, tech developers, activists, and researchers representing 17 new digital media and learning projects funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the HASTAC consortium. I’m extremely proud of Global Kid’s own winning project — RezEd — a…
Category: Virtual Worlds
NetSquared offering $100K for Mash-ups for Social Change
My buddy Glitteractica sends out a cool challenge being promoted by the NetSquared conference for technology mash-ups for social change. If you have a cool idea combining different web, mobile or other tech that meets some need in your community, draft it up and send it in to NetSquared by March 14. Here’s some examples:…
Second Life panel discussion on “Credibility in the New News” on February 29
Our friends at USC are organizing a Second Life discussion on "Credibility and Reputation in the New News" featuring Tony Curzon Price, Editor of OpenDemocracy.net, Jonathan Zittrain, Professor and Internet Scholar at Oxford University and Kathy Im, Program Officer at the MacArthur Foundation. The event will be held on the USC Annenberg Island [http://tinysl.com/Sf08849] at…
Global Kids receives new grant to create social network for virtual world educators
I am in Chicago right now representing Global Kids, who is one of 17 recipients of a grant for our work on digital media and learning. We received $72,000 to support the creation of "RezEd" a new social networking site and blog to support educators who use virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online games for…
Sharon Burns profiles eight virtual worlds in eight minutes (video)
Sharon Burns of the MacArthur Foundation has released a neat video that gives a brief overview of several virtual worlds, with an emphasis on their educational applications. In this eight-minute video she looks at HiPiHi, Club Penguin, Whyville, Webkins, Mokitown, There, Entropia Universe, and Gaia Online. Several of these I had almost no background on,…
Hello Kitty Online Beta-launching Soon: The cuteness overload may destroy the metaverse!
I have to admit, I am super-excited about the upcoming beta launch of the newest virtual world "Hello Kitty Online." The press release (which you can read after the jump) notes that the persistent 3d virtual environment will be able to accommodate thousands of players and NPCs from the popular kiddie franchise, including Badtz-Maru, My…
Global Kids on ABC News!
I finally got a chance to see the ABC news story from last week about Global Kids. The story focused on our new program teaching science in a real life classroom in Brooklyn using Second Life. Nice coverage of our work, which my colleagues Barry Joseph and Joyce Bettencourt are leading up. Good stuff, guys!
Learning for Failure: The MacArthur Digital Media & Learning Grantee Meeting
I had the honor of being among a small of incredibly smart, dedicated researchers and practitioners who are all supported by the Digital Media and Learning Initiative of the MacArthur Foundation. About 70 of us gathered from Thursday to Friday at USC to talk about issues of common concern, share progress on our respective projects,…
Cool trends: Second Life corporate builds donated to charitable causes
In July of 2007, Starwood Hotels announced that their first experiment with virtual worlds, the Virtual Aloft Hotel, had come to completion. Normally when such things happen, the corporation just has the island and the build derez into the ether and everyone congratulates themselves on a job well done. Starwood decided to do something different…
I’m on the Teen Grid!
My work avatar "Rik Gkid" was successfully created and transferred over to the Teen Grid today! I have to say that being ported over from the Main Grid over to Teen SL felt a bit like going into exile in a strange land. What is this giant volcano? Where are all the ad farms and…